Kyle Le Blanc (Van Damme) is an American working and living with his wife in Russia. After his wife is raped and killed at home, the criminal gets off due to lack of evidence; a vengeful Kyle shoots the man outside the courthouse in turn. As a result, he gets sentenced to a sinister and violent prison where the prisoners are forced into death-matches for the warden's amusement.

Unlike most of Van Damme's previous movies, his signature martial arts don't play a role, but the fights are portrayed in a more realistic manner. Fan response has received his performance in this film very well.

Tropes present in this film:

Badass Bookworm: Prisoner 451, who has a reputation for killing cellmates, reads books that he collects and stores on his side of the cell he shares with Kyle.

Bittersweet Ending: Billy's dead, and Prisoner 451 will spend the rest of his life in prison. On the bright side, Kyle has escaped with 451's help, and there is hope he will recover from his traumatic experience.

Boring Invincible Hero: Subverted all the way to hell with Kyle. Sure, he's the main character, but he loses about as much as he wins (in a departure from Van Damme's past characters).

Chekhov's Gun: Every time he's placed in solitary confinement, Kyle hears a prisoner on the other side of the wall moaning loudly, and he pounds on the wall as a way to quiet the other prisoner down. Turns out the other prisoner is Valya, the prison's most brutal fighter, who stops his violent rampage in the climax when Kyle inadvertently pounds a wall, because he took those wall-poundings as a source of comfort.

Driven to Suicide: At one point Kyle comes close to the brink of this...but the sight of a moth in the cell, the only other sign of life in the darkness of his current surroundings, reminds him of his wife's fervor for life and influences him to keep on going.

Prison Rape: Newly-arrived inmate Billy gets selected for this right off the bat, and it's implied that he's subjected to this every night afterward.

Rape as Backstory: The fate Kyle's wife suffered, in addition to being murdered afterwards. Also, Prisoner 451 was sexually abused by a male high school teacher, who he later set on fire in retaliation.